


mulberry wine

by theformerone



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, F/M, Psychosis, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 11:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: The color of his skin after their third day underground. The color of her blood, pooling in her mouth.for shikasaku day 3, and we dreamed in purples





	mulberry wine

Her skin is darker than her seal now. That is, her bruises are darker than the lavender mark on her forehead. 

They don't break her fingers because they use her to heal them. Nothing with chakra, but with sutures and thread. They beat the teeth out of her skull because she talked back too much. She spat them out like so many pearls. Sprayed blood in their eyes when they did it the second time, then the fourth after that. Sakura's smile looks like a chessboard, but she still smiles, doesn't she?

They'd shaved her head when they brought them in. That way, if they were moved, she wouldn't be able to leave her hair behind as a message to any Konoha shinobi that came after them. Shikamaru had thought that was very clever of them. That was something the girls were definitely taught in their shinobi lessons; Shikamaru can remember Ino doing it in hide-and-seek games. She always used it for misdirection, left her hair leading to her mother's room or to where Chouji was hiding. Ino was the best at hide-and-seek. 

That's a memory Shikamaru holds onto. It was one of the few he had shared with her. They blinked in Morse code when there was enough light to see. They told each other what they had been through; she had been kidnapped on the way to an assignment, he had been on the verge of breaking up a trafficking ring before his cover got blown. They count the days they've been under together. Forty-nine for him, thirty-seven for her. They tell each other stories. They try to keep each other sane. 

Sometimes when they come for Sakura, something about her changes. Like she leaves her body. Dissociates right into being someone else. Gets colder. Meaner. More vicious. Normal Sakura takes a hit differently than this Sakura does. Normal Sakura rolls with the punch if she can't dodge it, lets it glance off her like water off a duck's back. 

This Sakura takes the hit then turns the other cheek for another one. This Sakura corrects a guard's form when she kicks her right in the snatch. This Sakura calls a guard a pussy until he breaks his knuckle punching her in the face. 

It doesn't add up to much to her, the torture. She heals it minutely overnight, activating her Byakugō. She fixes what's broken internally, leaves the bruises to show. She can't grow back her teeth, but she doesn't seem troubled by the gaps in her mouth. 

To her, being the awful prisoner means he'll get the softer touch, even though he's in for the worse offense. Even though Sakura was the Godaime's apprentice, Shikamaru was the Nanadaime's Second. He rarely took missions outside the village, while Sakura did, and often. If anyone knew state secrets, it would be him. 

She invokes the burden of the physical beatings, so that he only has to worry about the mental ones. Those are battles he can fight.

Sakura has been fighting pain, spitting in its face, kicking it in the dick, and snapping its neck since she cut her hair off in the Chuunin Exams. These are fights she knows she can win. 

* * *

His eyes are more often purple than they are brown. Beaten in. Blackened, like so many palmfuls of berries. 

Looking at him reminds Sakura of summertime. She used to make blackberry jam with her grandmother. When her Sumire-obaa-chan would use a potato masher to grind up the berries, she always let Sakura do the mashing with her fists. 

"You're so sweet Sakura-chan," her obaa-chan would say, "you're going to rub off on the blackberries and make a sweet jam!"

She doesn't think she can stomach blackberries now. Shikamaru's fingers always look the worst. They had torn off his fingernails more than once, and the wounds had stayed open. They had kept taking them away, pulling them, yanking them off when they started to grow back. They had laughed at his body's feeble attempts to heal. 

More of his wounds were in his mind anyway. That much was clear from the way that he slept. He twitched. Flailed. Sometimes the worst of his bruises were the ones he inflicted on himself, being too wild in his sleep. He screams. It wakes Sakura up and he always feels bad over it. She gives him a smile, and blinks out something about how she's happy she didn't have to pay extra for the sleep deprivation. Shikamaru smiles back, and settles back down. 

He doesn't have an Inner Sakura to keep him safe, but he does have his father's training, and Yamanaka mind traps built by the clan head. He could hold up, under pressure. He's always very still in his cell next to hers. Even when she's being beaten. Even when they hit her so bad all she can do is moan like a wounded animal. He's still. Silent. Ferried away into his own mind, where none of this can touch him. Where none of it can hurt him. 

She knows they're rattling around in his head, looking for something. She can tell by how he fidgets. How he jumps. His own body gives him away, twitching, making him turn his head, making him hear things. Sakura's never seen psychosis induced as a way to protect the brain from torture, but it sounds like something Ino's ancestors would cook up for emergencies like these.

Maybe he had a list of triggers in his mind, already attached to older, awfuler things, stirred them like sleeping bears in his mind. Then wrapped himself in hallucinations during his interrogations. Protected himself that way instead of just being a cookie too tough to crack. It would hurt him if he wasn't too careful. 

She can only be grateful it's Shikamaru in here, and not someone with connections to the Yamanaka. 

Sakura isn't sure how large his mind palace is. All shinobi at Jounin rank have one, because Jounin are generally the cream of the crop. They all know how to file shit away. Memories, subconscious thoughts, attack patterns, affairs of state. They know how to ferry it away. To obscure it. To hide it. To make it look like it was something else. Sakura can guess that if hers is the size of Konoha General Hospital, Shikamaru's might be as large as Fire Country itself. 

And when the episodes end, and he touches the ground, touches his skin, counts his fingers, counts her eyelashes, they speak in blinks again. He comes back to himself the way she heals at night. Over and over again.

Until they die, or until they are freed. Whichever comes first.

**Author's Note:**

> 'awfuler' is not a word but neither was 'elbow' so who cares? not me! :)


End file.
